The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics Part 115 pptx

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Such respected scholars as Edward Sapir (1921) dismissed signed languages as mere substitutes for speech. Perhaps the most egregious case of misrepresenting the nature of signed languages comes from Helmer Myklebust (1957: 241–42): The manual language used by the deaf is an ideographic language. It is more pictorial, less symbolic. Ideographic language systems, in comparison with verbal systems, lack precision, subtlety, and flexibility. It is likely that Man cannot achieve his ultimate potential through an Ideographic language. The manual sign language must be viewed as inferior to the verbal as a language. A more appropriate way to understand deaf people is as members of a lin- guistic and cultural minority (Charrow and Wilbur 1989; S. Wilcox 1989; Lane, Hoffmeister, and Bahan 1996). The linguistic-cultural perspective view recognizes that deaf people are members of a language community who share a set of cultural beliefs and practices (Padden and Humphries 1988). It also recognizes that the deaf community is multilingual and that signed languages are minority languages. Scholars now use the terms ‘‘deaf’’ and ‘‘Deaf’’ to distinguish the audiological condition of deafness from the cultural and linguistic identity, respectively. 2. The World’s Signed Languages Although no formal survey of the world’s signed languages has ever been con- ducted, it is generally recognized that they number in the hundreds. The thirteenth edition of the Summer Institute of Linguistics Ethnologue of the world’s languages lists 103 signed languages (Grimes 1996). This surely is a quite conservative number. Like spoken languages, signed languages may be classified into genetic or family groups. These genetic relations follow the historical development of signed lan- guages, and so do not reflect the same relations as those for spoken languages. French Sign Language, for example, is the parent language of American Sign Lan- guage (ASL) and Russian Sign Language. 3. Linguistic Research on Signed Languages Over the past forty years, linguists have demonstrated that signed languages may be described using the same analytic units as spoken languages. While differences in structure attributable to modality (spoken vs. signed) have been noted (Klima and Bellugi 1979), the overwhelming conclusion is that signed languages share impor- tant characteristics with spoken languages (Meier, Cormier, and Quinto-Pozos 2002). The modern era of linguistic research on signed language began in the late 1960s with the pioneering work of William C. Stokoe. As a professor of English at Gallaudet College (now Gallaudet University), Stokoe (1960) began to apply lin- guistic techniques from the structuralist tradition prevalent at the time to study the language that he saw deaf students using. 3.1. Phonology One of the pioneering discoveries made by Stokoe was that signed languages can be described phonologically. Before this, it was assumed that the signs, or the words, of signed languages were unanalyzable. Stokoe demonstrated that signs consist of analyzable units of structure. Stokoe coined the term ‘‘chereme’’ for these units, the structural equivalent of the phonemes of spoken languages. Stokoe analyzed the phonology of signs into three major classes: handshape (the configuration that the hand makes when producing the sign), location (the 1114 sherman wilcox place where the sign is produced, for example, on the head or in the neutral space in front of the signer’s body), and movement (the motion made by the signer in producing the sign, for example, upward or toward the signer’s body). Stokoe called these three aspects of a sign, recognizing that, unlike the sequential ordering of phonemes in spoken languages, cheremes occur simultaneously and cannot be produced independently: it is not possible to articulate a movement without also articulating that which moves (the handshape). Linguists later called these aspects the parameters of a sign. Battison (1978) added a fourth parameter, orientation (the direction the hand faces when pro- ducing the sign). The psychological reality of parameters is demonstrated by min- imal pairs, signs differing only in one parameter which have different meanings (Klima and Bellugi 1979). Linguists now rely on a variety of theoretical models to study the phonology of signed languages, and analyses of phonetics, intonation, prosody, and stress are common in the literature (Liddell 1984a; Sandler 1986; Padden and Perlmutter 1987; Liddell and Johnson 1989; Wilbur 1990, 1999b; Gold- smith 1991; Greftegreff 1992; Brentari 1998). 3.2. Morphology The morphology of signed languages reflects their expression in the gestural-visual modality. Signed languages make extensive use of space in their morphology, for example, by incorporating spatial locations to indicate verbal arguments; in ad- dition to the hands, the face plays a critical role in signed language morphology, expressing a range of grammatical information such as questions, topic, adverbials, and so forth. ASL, like many signed languages, is highly synthetic with tendencies toward polysynthesis (Wallin 1990; Engberg-Pedersen 1993). ASL allows morphemes indi- cating action, person agreement, aspect, and adverbial information to be combined into a single, multimorphemic ASL word; for example, ‘I very carefully gave [one] to each person’ would be expressed with a single sign in ASL. Signed languages commonly have complex verb morphology (Klima and Bel- lugi 1979; Liddell 1984b; Meir 2002). ASL exhibits extensive morphology for rep- resenting iterative, habitual, continuative, inceptive, and other verb aspects. Aspect is indicated by changes to the temporal profile of the root’s lexical movement. Supalla and Newport (1978) first described noun-verb derivational morphol- ogy in ASL. Pizzuto and Corazza (1996) report on noun morphology in Italian Sign Language. Johnston (2001) argues that Auslan (Australian Sign Language) noun- verb derivational morphology is only partially grammaticalized, remaining closely linked to an iconic base. Signed languages rely on facial markers to signal intonation and prosody (Sandler 1999); to mark interrogatives, imperatives, and other utterance types (Wilbur 1999a; Reilly, McIntire, and Bellugi 1990); and to indicate various types signed languages 1115 of adverbial information such as intensity of action (Anderson and Reilly 1998). Facial markers also commonly signal speaker subjectivity (Janzen, Shaffer, and Wilcox 2000). 3.3. Syntax Research on the syntax of signed languages has examined issues of word class, word order, and relations among constituents such as relative clauses (Coulter 1983; Bouchard 1996; Senghas et al. 1997; Wilbur 1997); question formation (Celo 1996); topic-comment structure and the flow of information in discourse (Janzen 1997, 1999); the interaction of morphology and syntax (Aarons and Morgan 2000); and the grammatical use of space (van Hoek 1992; Engberg-Pedersen 1993; Emmorey and Riley 1995). Discourse in signed languages is characterized by a prevalence of topic- comment structure. In ASL, topics are marked grammatically, with the topic phrase accompanied by raised eyebrows, a slightly backward head tilt, and a pause between the topic and comment phrases. Topic-comment structure has been described as a kind of ASL sentence type along with questions, imperatives, assertions, and others (Baker and Cokely 1980). ASL distinguishes two types of interrogatives: Wh-questions and yes-no ques- tions. Yes-no questions are typically statements with the addition of facial markers including raised eyebrows and head tilted forward. Wh-questions are indicated with a question word and facial markers including brow furrow, eye squint, and head tilted backward or to one side (Baker and Cokely 1980). 3.4. Fingerspelling Fingerspelling is a system of manually representing the letters of a written language. ASL, for example, uses fingerspelling to represent the twenty-six letters of the En- glish alphabet. Fingerspelling is often used for proper names or technical terms and is a source of loan words from spoken languages (Battison 1978; Sutton Spence 1999; Brentari and Padden 2001). A variety of fingerspelling systems are used in the world’s signed languages. ASL and many other signed languages use a one-handed system; British Sign Language (BSL) and related languages use a two-handed fingerspelling system (Sutton Spence, Woll, and Allsop 1990). Studies of fingerspelling have examined its acquisition (Padden and Le Master 1985), relation to reading (Hanson, Liberman, and Shankweiler 1983; Padden and Ramsey 1998), and phonetic structure (S. Wilcox 1992; Ann 1993). 1116 sherman wilcox 4. Signed Languages and Cognitive Linguistics 4.1. Iconicity Iconicity is clearly a feature of signed languages, so much so that before the sci- entific study of these languages the overriding belief was that signs were merely pictorial representations without linguistic structure. As linguists turned their at- tention to signed languages, they faced two obstacles in their efforts to demonstrate that these were, in fact, natural human languages: Saussure’s claim that a defining characteristic of language is the arbitrary relation of signifiant to signifie ´ and Hockett’s (1966) proposal of a set of design features universally characteristic of human language. According to Hockett, these defining features of language in- cluded arbitrariness (the relation between a meaningful element in language and its denotation is independent of any physical or geometrical resemblance between the two), discreteness (the possible messages in any language constitute a discrete repertory rather than a continuous one), and vocal/auditory channel (the channel for all linguistic communication is vocal/auditory). Within the signed language literature, iconicity has typically been viewed as a direct relation between linguistic form and reality. Wilbur (1987: 162) defines ico- nicity as ‘‘a reflection in language of the actual state of affairs in the real world.’’ Valli and Lucas (1995: 6) regard the iconic relation to be one in which ‘‘the form of the symbol is an icon or picture of some aspect of the thing or activity being symbolized.’’ Mandel (1977) defined iconicity in a way more compatible with the cognitive perspective. According to Mandel, an iconic sign consisted of a gesture (any move- ment of the body or a part of the body that is used meaningfully in ASL discourse) ‘‘perceived by signers, or potentially perceived by them, as visually related to its ref- erent’’ (94). Mandel described a number of iconic devices in ASL and argued that the lexicon and the grammar of ASL are motivated by these devices. Iconic devices fall into two major classes: (i) presentation, in which the signer presents a token of ac- tion (mime) or points to a token of an object type (indexical presentation), and (ii) depiction, in which the articulator takes on the shape of an object (substitutive or substantive depiction) or in which the moving articulator leaves a trace in the shape of the object (virtual depiction). Mandel also noted that iconicity and conventionality are distinct parameters of language that are, nevertheless, implicationally related. Thus, while it is common to find signs which are highly iconic and highly conven- tional, it is impossible for signed language to include signs that are entirely arbitrary and completely ad hoc. DeMatteo (1977) explored the continuous as opposed to discrete nature of ASL’s coding system, arguing that visual imagery and analogical representations of real-world scenes are integral to the grammar. signed languages 1117 This early research on the iconic and analogical properties of signed languages was highly controversial. While signed language scholars recognized the ubiquity of iconicity, the predominant reaction was to deny any role to iconicity in the gram- mars of signed languages. Ironically, this occurred at a time when cognitive and functional linguists were exploring iconicity for the insights it could provide onto the structure of language and the mind (Haiman 1985; Givo ´ n 1989; Croft 1990). Frishberg (1975) demonstrated that historical change acts to erode iconicity and heighten the arbitrary nature of ASL. Frishberg’s data came primarily from mor- phologically simple forms as represented in dictionaries or word lists, which left open the question of what role iconicity plays in grammar. Klima and Bellugi (1979) expanded the scope of investigation to include morphological data. Although they consistently recognized what they called the ‘‘two faces’’ of sign, its iconicity as well as its arbitrariness, Klima and Bellugi stressed that the grammars of signed lan- guages act to submerge any inherent iconic properties of individual lexical signs: ‘‘One of the most striking effects of regular morphological operations on signs is the distortion of form so that iconic aspects of the signs are overridden and submerged’’ (1979: 30). One example given by Klima and Bellugi is the morphological change marking intensification on certain statives in ASL. Phonologically, this change consists of a slight initial hold on the movement of a sign followed by a rapid movement. When this grammatical morpheme is applied to the ASL stem SLOW, the resulting sign means ‘very slow’. Klima and Bellugi point out that the sign VERY-SLOW is made with a fast movement, faster than that used in the base sign SLOW: ‘‘Thus the form of ‘very slow’ is incongruent with the meaning of the basic sign’’ (1979: 30). Echoing this position, Valli and Lucas (1995: 7) claim that while iconicity may be present in individual noun and verb forms, it plays no role in the grammatical relation between noun and verb forms: It is probably true that the form of the sign SIT is an iconic representation of human legs sitting. [However,] focusing on its iconicity will not provide much insight into the interesting relationship between SIT and the noun CHAIR, and other noun-verb pairs. Stokoe (1986: 179), on the other hand, recognized a near-universal diagram- matic iconicity in noun-verb morphology: If a hand (or both of them) plays a role in the sign’s formation, it is quite possi- ble, given the testimony of all of the world’s signed languages so far studied, that the hand’s configuration signifies the actor more than it signifies the action, and that the hand’s action or movement signifies more the signified action than the actor. Valli and Lucas (1995: 7) also claim that iconicity is not present in verb aspect morphology: ‘‘Nor will [iconicity] help explain how the movement of SIT can be modified to mean SIT FOR A LONG TIME (slow, circular movement) or SIT ABRUPTLY (short, sharp movement).’’ 1118 sherman wilcox If iconicity is seen as a direct mapping of linguistic form to an objective real- ity, clearly iconicity will be easiest to find in more concrete lexical items such as CHAIR, less so in abstract, bound morphology such as intensification, and virtually impossible to locate in the highly abstract grammatical areas of the language such as verb aspect or grammatical class distinctions. It is here that Cognitive Linguistics has the most to contribute to the study of iconicity. 4.2. Cognitive Iconicity In S. Wilcox (2002b), I propose a cognitive linguistic framework for understanding iconicity in signed languages. Cognitive iconicity builds on the claim made by cog- nitive linguists that phonological and s emantic space are subregions of conceptual space (Langacker 1987). For signed languages, the import of cognit ive iconicity is that the articulators, hands and their motions, are to be regarded conceptually; cognitive iconicity consists in mappings across phonological and semantic spaces. Taub (2001: 19),alsoworkingwithinthecognitivelinguisticframework,makesthesameclaim: ‘‘Iconicity is not an objective relationship between image and referent; rather, it is a relationship between our mental models of image and referent.’’ Conceptual features of objects and motions are captured in the billiard ball Idealized Cognitive Model (Langacker 1991: 13). When applied to the phonological pole of signs, the billiard-ball model recognizes that hands are physical objects instantiated in space and their movements are instantiated in time. Further, hands as objects instantiated in material substance have certain qualities: basic qualities such as shape, size, and location, as well as derived qualities such as function. Newport and Meier (1985: 885) report the following formational patterns in ASL classifier predicates: The handshape is a classifier for the semantic category (e.g. human vs. animate nonhuman vs. vehicle) or size and shape of the moving object; the movement path (one of a small number of discretely different movements, e.g. straight vs. cir- cular vs. arc) is a morpheme representing the path of motion of the moving object; the manner of movement is a morpheme for the manner of motion along the path (e.g. bounce vs. roll vs. random); a second handshape (typically produced on the left hand) is a classifier for a secondary object, with respect to which the primary object moves; and the placement of the second handshape along the path is a morpheme for the spatial relationship of the movement path with respect to this secondary object (e.g. from vs. to vs. past). Across all of these forms, we see that handshapes represent objects and their features; secondary handshapes represent secondary objects and their features; the spatial relationship of hands represents the spatial relationship of referents; hand movements represent actions; and manner of motion of the articulator re- presents manner of motion of the referent. Classifier predicates thus exhibit a systematic pattern of iconic relations in which conceptual objects and actions are mapped onto handshapes and their movements. signed languages 1119 . language of the actual state of affairs in the real world.’’ Valli and Lucas (1995: 6) regard the iconic relation to be one in which ‘ the form of the symbol is an icon or picture of some aspect of the. equivalent of the phonemes of spoken languages. Stokoe analyzed the phonology of signs into three major classes: handshape (the configuration that the hand makes when producing the sign), location (the 1114. con- ducted, it is generally recognized that they number in the hundreds. The thirteenth edition of the Summer Institute of Linguistics Ethnologue of the world’s languages lists 103 signed languages